


Firing Squad

by Dustbunnygirl



Series: Tales of the Bard - Reggie's Story [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-05
Updated: 2007-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title: Firing Squad, 3 of 10<br/>Prompt: Water gun, “the 10s” challenge.<br/>Fandom: n/a<br/>Pairing: Dahlia/Reggie, with guest appearances by Eva Morris, Guy Brenner, and Jeremy Logan.<br/>Rating: Maybe PG, but for excessive drama and little else.<br/>Word count: 932<br/>Warnings: No, this has nothing whatsoever to do with bestiality, even if one of the characters being written about here is, at the moment, a ferret. Those of you who read “The Not-So-Sordid Tale of Reginald the Unfortunate” (wherein I channeled Douglas Adams, badly) already know that furry little Reggie’s not at all what he seems. No angry comments or links to PETA, please.<br/>Disclaimer: These characters are entirely owned by moi and come from my still untitled, unpublished, mostly second drafted Monster Book of the Unholy. They do not play well with others. The only person to blame for them is, unfortunately, me. However, blame legal_padawan for the fact this story was written at all, as she twisted my arm into this challenge of hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firing Squad

Three dozen hard-boiled eggs lay in three meticulous lines between the couch and the television in the apartment on Mass. Three layers of newspaper stretched out from beneath the eggs out to the kitchen counter in front and the exterior wall behind with a good four inches worth of paper pushed up along the base board. Four water guns waited on the kitchen counter, resting on saucers, lying in wait. 

Jeremy Logan stood just shy of the newspaper’s edge, shaking his head.

“Somebody explain it to me again,” the blond said, scratching his chin.

“Easy-peasy stuff here, Maj.” Guy patted Jeremy on the shoulder, grinning as the other man flinched at the nickname. 

“We’re going to drop the ‘Your Majesty’ jokes when exactly?”

“When it quits being fun for me.” Guy grabbed a water gun from one the saucers and gestured toward the reclining eggs. “Simple stuff. We take the water gun, all sloshy with the food coloring mixture, like so. We point it at the eggs, all freshly boiled and ready for dyeing, like so. Then we use the gun to shoot the eggs, making the food color go all spritzy-spritzy.”

“Then the eggs sitty-sitty over nighty-nighty and we put them in the baskety-baskety’s come morning.” Dahlia squeezed in between the two men, throwing rubber gloves at each. “You’re going to want these, trust me. Gets a little drippy-drippy and messy-messy.”

“I think you’re all crazy-crazy.”

Eva popped up by his right elbow, a stack of newspaper still in hand. “What was your first clue?”

Guy checked the water level in his gun and tsked under his breath. “Nonbelievers. Do not shun tradition. There is a special place in hell for tradition-shunners.” He gave the trigger a press, launching a test shot of green liquid at the papered floor. “Besides, they say this is how Jackson Pollack started.”

“You say that every year, and I’ve yet to hear you tell me who ‘they’ are and where ‘they’ got their information.” 

Guy turned, leveling the primed water gun at Eva’s butter yellow blouse. “Hush, pesky human. Specifics are for history majors. Art needs no such constraint.” He turned to Dahlia then, his face a mask of mock seriousness. “Lieutenant Thorn, please dispense the artillery.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n Crunch.” Dahlia gave a half salute, then reached behind her. After each gun had been handed out, Guy stepped to the edge of the paper. Jeremy and the girls followed suit. 

“Ready.” Four guns sloshed to attention, driblets of colored water slipping from their corked ends and down the gloved hands of their bearers. “Aim.” In unison, all four marksmen took aim at the rows of gleaming white shells.

“Fire!”

\--

Streaks of pale yellow, blue, red, and green dripped down the walls and from the ceiling. The curtains, once a pale green, were now covered in polka dots of varying shapes and sizes. Only the couch was spared, its dark maroon slipcover immune to the dripping pastels. 

Four bodies laid sprawled across the crumpled newspaper, Eva and Jeremy landed near the base of the couch, splattered in food coloring and taking full advantage of the truce to catch their breath. Guy, who had somehow wrested the other three guns away from his compatriots sometime during the shoot out, lay on his side spraying alternating streams of color at the kitchen counter. Dahlia stared up at the ceiling, counting red splotches, careful not to count the purple ones where the red and blue had gotten too cozy. Purple, she thought, no matter who its parents are, simply isn’t red in the strictly legal sense.

A cold, wet nose nudged her cheek. Without looking away from her half-counted ceiling she reached over to pick Reggie up and settle him carefully on her stomach. Everything was quiet then, as Dahlia counted in her head and scratched at the spot between neck and shoulder that made Reggie’s little ferret foot thump. And then…

“You do realize it’s just luck that any of the dye ever makes it to the eggs, don’t you?” the ferret asked in his high-pitched, condescending tone. 

“Shhh. I’m counting. 97, 98, 99…”

“I can see how he talks _you_ into it every year, but I’ll never understand how he twisted Eva’s arm. I always thought she had such solid common sense.”

“If I have to start over, you’re pink for sure.” Dahlia stuck her tongue out, which earned her eight little ferret claws, poking through her shirt. “Hey!” she said, jerking her head up finally to stare at the animal nestled comfortably on her abdomen. “What’s the big i…”

Dahlia nearly laughed herself silly when she got a look at Reggie. Every spot that usually was light brownish-tan was now streaked blue or red. The small white circle around the tip of his tail had somehow ended up green. The only color he didn’t seem to be, possibly because his fur was too dark to hold the light shade, was yellow. And he didn’t look particularly happy about his new, festive coloring.

“Awww, I think you look adorable,” she said, and the corners of his muzzle pulled down in the equivalent of a human frown. Dahlia’d looked in all the ferret books, had talked to all the vets, and none of them said there was any documentation that would support the ferret’s ability to frown. And yet, Reggie managed somehow.

“Revenge is a dish best served with ketchup, remember.”

“I thought it was best served cold?”

“No, definitely ketchup,” he said, swatting her cheek with his still-wet tail. “Your shoes taste much better that way.”


End file.
